The purpose of the NPT Review,
which happens
every five years, is to reaffirm the signatories' commitments to the
treaty's
three purposes: disarmament, nonproliferation, and peaceful use of
nuclear
energy.
Countries without nuclear
weapons that
signed the NPT, such as Iran, were promised full support in developing
other
nuclear technologies in exchange for renouncing nuclear weapons. The
five
nuclear powers that signed the NPT agreed to get rid of their nuclear
weapons.
On March 28, 2005, Former President Jimmy Carter, wrote for the Washington Post, "While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons."
On May 5, 2005, Kennedy-era Defense
Secretary Robert McNamara said, "I would characterize current U.S.
nuclear
weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and
dreadfully
dangerous." [1]
On April 29, 2010, US
Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton said she did not see Iran's purpose in attending the NPT
conference, because their violations since signing the NPT are "absolutely
indisputable."
Speaking at the American Jewish Committee gala dinner in Washington, Clinton called the threat Iran posed to Israel as "real" and "growing".
At last month's two-day conference on nuclear disarmament hosted in Tehran and attended by representatives of 60 countries, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a statement declaring nuclear weaponry as "haram" meaning prohibited under Islam. Iran says it enriches uranium for civilian applications and that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has a right to the technology already in the hands of many others.
In D. C. Clinton opined, "Iran, with its anti-Semitic president and hostile nuclear ambitions, also continues to threaten Israel, but it also threatens the region and it sponsors terrorism against many"At every turn, Iran has met our outstretched hand with a clenched fist. But our engagement has helped build a growing global consensus on the need to pressure Iran's leaders to change course. We are now working with our partners at the United Nations to craft tough new sanctions." [2]
In 2005, Professor Virginia Tilley, explained that in his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word "map" or the term "wiped off". According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was "this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.
"In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah's regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the "occupying regime' in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, "This too shall pass.'" [3]
In April 2010, several diplomats told Reuters that Egypt made it clear that it sees Israel as a higher priority than Iran and threatened to prevent the NPT conference from reaching any agreements if it does not get what it wants vis-Ã-vis Israel.
Egyptian initiatives at NPT meetings are nothing new, but this year they
have
issued a paper calling for an international treaty conference by 2011 to
launch
negotiations between all states of the Middle East, regarding an
internationally and effectively verifiable treaty for the establishment
of a
nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.
At the 1995 NPT conference, member states unanimously supported a resolution backing the idea of "a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons as well as other weapons of mass destruction."
The preamble to the NPT
calls on
nuclear weapons states "to facilitate the cessation of the manufacture
of
nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and
the
elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of
their
delivery."
Article VI of the NPT
obliges
signatories "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures
relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to
nuclear
disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under
strict
and effective international control."
